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Monday, April 18, 2016

Mother Nature helping to educate on Teamwork

It seems now more than ever, we need more lessons on character education. In our upper grades, we have a designated time each week to have character education class. This week we are focusing on teamwork, we this is our character virtue of the month for April!

Feel free to use this lesson with any age! I could see it being used in Kindergarten all the way up through middle school. The more we have these conversations, the better off our students will be.

Objective: Students will understand the concept of teamwork, and how mother nature is using teamwork to be more effective and efficient with their resources.

I started out the lesson by asking students what teamwork is, and why we need it. I then asked them what animal uses teamwork. I LOVED asking this question because I learned so much about random animals that I would have never known otherwise. After I heard from everyone on their guesses and explanations, I told them we would be learning today about Canadian Geese! We watched a short 2 minute video on Canadian Geese (Canadian Geese on Teamwork), and then had them work together in groups to answer the questions about the video:

1. How does flying in a V formation benefit the geese as opposed to flying alone?

2. What happens if a goose that is flying in V formation gets tired?

3. If a goose is sick or injured and has to leave the group, what do other geese do?

4. Why do geese make a honking noise when flying together?

5. What did you learn about teamwork from the Canadian geese flying in formation?

I love when they make the connection between what they saw in the video and what is happening in their classrooms. The more we can demonstrate and model positive character traits for them, the more likely they will be to use them in real life!